Ignoratia

After reading Brave New World, I decided to write a piece commenting on intellectual dilution and the decline of literacy.

It was all over the news. Like an epidemic the word had spread, plaguing the world’s swiftly beating hearts and troubled minds with a horror that, until this day, had remained unbeknownst to mankind. An apocalypse – as I had read over morning coffee (Oh sweet nectar of life!) – had dawned, driven by intellectual dilution and downright stupidity. There spurred with it a race of terrifying and mindless creatures; a species so primal they were rendered speechless, thoughtless, and consumed with a hunger for conformity. These creatures were none other than the monstrous beasts known as flesh-eating, mind-gobbling zombies.

Of course, as a life-long student, I had prepared myself already with the necessary tools to overcome this contagion: a wealth of literature from my personal library. My collection, once read aloud, and which acted as a form of kryptonite against gluttonous zombies, instantly led to the decay of Ignoratia: the foul virus that had consumed so many.

One day as I sat reading – one has to stay knowledgeable in these unenlightened times, you know – a thin layer of smoke began to permeate the room. I ran to the window, keeping my book nearby, and peered into the outer world.

The gut-guzzlers had constructed a bonfire, and in it, I saw a thousand wounded soldiers – the books we intellects had tried so adamantly to use against them – turn to ash. If knowledge was rendered useless, what then could be used against the ever-ominous threat of ignorance?

Then, an idea suddenly struck me. Of course! How could I have forgotten? It seemed to me the only obvious solution. I ran to my favorite totem (a human skull I liked to call Yorick) and lifted open the latched compartment in his head. Inside was a button, which I pushed, and which activated a series of locks and bolts behind a bookcase. The bookcase edged open slowly, revealing a glass case, a glowing spotlight, and all the fanfare deserved by the English language’s most sacred text: Shakespeare’s First Folio. I snatched the text from its crystal cradle, ran to the window, cast it open in my frenzied euphoria and shouted, “Stop!”

The zombies turned their attention away from the dazzling fire, grunting like cavemen and slobbering like dogs. For a moment, they stared blindly at the open window. Then, with a bray from the vilest of the lot, they hurtled toward me.

“And seeing ignorance is the curse of God,” I started, “knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven, unless you be possess'd with devilish spirits, you cannot but forbear to murder me!”

The zombies halted, enchanted with the power of prose. A shudder coursed through each body as the knowledge, which acted as a vaccine, combated the virus. Then, they began to transform; their eyes widened, their backs straightened, their arms drooped.

The wounds of Ignoratia had healed.

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